May not be what you're looking for but I like to buy baby potatoes, usually yukon golds. Then I boil them, take them out of the water and let the cool for 5 mins. Then, one at a time, I smash them inbetween two papertowels. Then I fry them in butter, sprinkle with rosemary, sea or kosher salt and pepper. Delicious! Soft on the inside, crispy on the outside. You could also roast them, making sure theres olive oil on both sides of the potato and roast at 375 for 30-40 minutes. Either way produces crispy potatoes, though the butter version is waaaay better in my opinion.

Mmmm, this sounds good.

I haven't cooked a duck since I can remember although it's Mr HB's favorite. I guess I'll have to cook one up for the fat.

Recently I've gotten really into frying potatoes in a pan and trying out different combinations of spices, oils, and degree of frying/crunchiness, but there's something I can't quite work out (hence my newfound membership of this site, yay! )

A while back I went to a breakfast restaurant and had pan-fried potatoes that seamt to have been dipped in somekind of marinade that developed into a delicious random and thin crust around the potato when you fried it, and I have been wondering how to do that ever since. Do any of you know have anykind of experience with something like this?

I would love to hear everybody's potato frying tips of any kind!

Thanks everyone,
TinCupO'Smokey

Sounds like they dip the potatoes in a batter first. Like Chinese fried shrimp, a thin crust. I prefer using peanut oil to fry with, for one you can get it pretty hot and two, it tastes good. If the potatoes were real thin you can dip them in a batter and fry them raw. By the time the batter cooks, the potato will be cooked. If you're making alot, pick up a mandolin.

First of all, thanks for all your enthusiam and the plentitude of good advice. I regret not having giving you guys feedback before, but a computer outage had me doing nothing but frying potatoes these last days.

I tried out Corazon's suggestion, where you beat up some semi-boiled potatoes and then fry them, which I did and added shredded bacon to get the bacon aroma, but also because bacon is nice in itself. The bacon gets best if you start with just the bacon in the pan and let it get sort-of crispy before you throw in the battered, half-done potatoes. Timing is crucial in getting the potatoes crunchy on the outside and the bacon crispy and not burnt.

Gourmet food is really something about being able to cook up delicious meals for friends out of simple ingredients on the spot, rather than prancing about the kitchen with hoidy-toidy ingredients, leaving only some miniscule serving of some sort, instead of lavish servings so we all can gorge ourselves.

Potatoes are ideal for this kind of deliciously home-cooked fast-food. I would certainly like to hear if anybody have other ideas for delicious things that can be whipped up on the spot and out of nowhere and out of accesible ingredients.